3rd Year Program

International Theatre School of Rome

INTERPRETATION

The Modern Theater and the Theater of the '900

THEATRE OF THE '900

Between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century we saw the transition from classical to modern theater, or from a word theater to one focusing more on physical action, on gesture. The birth of psychoanalysis with Freud opens the track to Stanislavski's theoretical work, centered on the actor's interpretative emotion. Next to the classical figures of the theater, of actor and author, a new figure was born and it will shortly became central: the director. With the emergence of historical avant-gardes, new forms of theater are born, such as the "theater of cruelty" by Artaud, the "epic theater" of Brecht and, in the second half of the century, the "theater of the absurd" by Beckett and Ionesco radically change the approach to the staging and determine a new road to the theater, already opened by the likes of Cocteau, Strindberg, Ibsen and Cechov, not to mention Jarry that with the "Ubu Roi" breaks the bourgeois theater. We will analyze the work of various authors who contributed to this theatrical evolution.

A. CECHOV

• The "indirect action"
• Connotation of the character as a "fixed" instrument
• Importance of the psychological detail of the characters
• Stage tension and harmony research
• Relationship between realism and symbolism

H. IBSEN

• The "b curtain"
• Characters built on the contradiction between ability and ambition
• The inexorability of fate
• Action as an inner memory released from the present
• Impossibility of integration between the artist and society at any time.

A. STRINDBERG

• Naturalism
• Breakdown of the symmetry of the dialogues
• Multiplicity of the psychological characteristics of the characters
• Drama as a reflection of conscience
• The "Intima Teater"

V. MAJAKOVSKIJ

• Verbal and image games
• Poetic hyperbolism
• "Functional" art, stripped of any aesthetic psychology
• "Self Subscribing"

F. GARCÍA LORCA

• Dream and evasion theme
• Blood, death and fertility
• Modern tragedy: the sacrifice
• Relationship between symbolism and surrealism
• Conjunction between myth and poetry

L. PIRANDELLO

• The "theater of the mirror"
• Theater in the theater: decomposition of dramatic structures
• Abatement of the fourth wall
• Incommunicability, solitude, inauthentic communication
• Difference between "comic" and "humor"

J. GENET

• Being and Appearance - Image and Reality
• The artifice of theatrical representation
• Modern tragedy: victims and perpetrators
• Beautiful and sublime in the sordid
• Objective action - subjective fantasy

F. DÜRRENMATT

• Demystification of historical judgment
• The deforming stylization
• Full bodied sense of reality
• Virtuous manipulation of grotesque instruments
• Sarcastic and ironic non-conformism

E. O’NEILL

• Denouncement of corruption, disintegration and alienation of civilization
• Dominant fatalism
• Expressionism
• The "mystic cycle"
• Use of Freudian theories

T. WILLIAMS

• The psychological phantom
• From the obsessive image to the theatrical writing
• The grotesque in romantic aesthetics
• Crisis as truth

A. MILLER

• Relationship with classical tragedy
• Social criticism
• Psychology and sociology
• Moral and redemption

The Avant-garde Theatres of the ‘900

THEATRE AND THE FIGURATIVE ARTS

After a deep analysis of the greatest pictorial artistic movements - from Realism to Expressionism, from Futurism to Surrealism – the course will focus on the existing binomial between artistic object and stage message. The search for the movement’s quality, the timbre, the words, the break-up or fading that can better express the instant captured by the brush: all these elements will create a work of poetry, music and image to represent the colour, the light and the environment conceived by the artist. In this way it will be possible to give a theatrical shape to Van Gogh’s tormented brushstroke, to Monet’s nostalgic atmosphere, to Chagall’s ironic and dreamy violets, to Picasso’s definite line. Then the students have to show, in small groups, a roundup of “scenic pictures” that represent different pictorial works, in a non-random sequence where the poetical apex will the passage from an artist to another.

THE SURREALIST THEATRE

We will see how the dramatic elements, when driven towards perfection and go beyond the powers of logic, border on mystery which represents the limit of human knowledge. Starting with Cocteau’s works, we will play a game of mirrors where the farce replies to drama; the tragedy to the comedy; reality to imagination and vice versa. However, in this purely intellectual journey, we look for the absolute and mystery in a game of symbols, which are reminiscent of the myth, the taste for surprise and the Dada experiences. The characters will be taken to the extreme and will leave an aftertaste that will sometimes reveal an over-emphasized cruelty and sometimes a soft irony, which will in turn reveal a hallucinatory truth. A logical succession of illogical circumstances that extends to the supernatural will outline the inspirational function of poetry.

J. COCTEAU

• Interaction between music-dance-theatre and painting-sculpture
• Use of the first technological forms in dramaturgy
• Relationship between the plastic arts and representation
• Dadaist and surrealist elements

THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

Students will be able to recognize and analyze thematic and interpretative methodologies of the great psychological and moral themes of our era. The inability to communicate, loneliness, alienation, brutishness, cruelty, skepticism will be translated into an unreal, poetic dimension, which represents the existential reality of modern man. The emotional sphere is reduced, the gestures give weak signs, whose sense is often impenetrable. Objects lose their functional value, reality is distorted by insanity and everything becomes mechanical, illogical, and “absurd”. Then, in retaliation, madness invades reality; it creates new forms of communication which are emphasized by everyday frustrations. Behind the civil man there is an exited, solitary, fool person that wanders around in search of himself. The improvisations are based on updated readings of texts. Students will practice contemporary dynamics, which are made of actions, speed, fragments of gestures, images, emptied language where the b presence of technology disguises a breakdown in communication and sends man into a state of loneliness.

A. JARRY

• Resetting of psychological dimension of characters
• Inhuman characters and mechanization: puppets
• Reduction of the purely egocentric psychological processes
• Breaking of the logical connections either in the language or in the development of the plot and the action
• Mixture of styles

S. BECKETT

• Making the absurd objective
• Emptying the gesture and the word
• Characters as "anti-heroes"
• Non-communication
• Absence of memory
• Immobility of time
• Transformation of detail into event through temporal distortion

E. IONESCO

• Breach between the individual and reality
• “Non-sense”
• Progressive invasion of insanity into the character
• From the burlesque to the tragic
• Unreality of reality
• Banal language
• Common and daily language dislocation
• Express the gap through the language of the word and the gestures

THE EPIC THEATRE

At the beginning of the ’30, Brecht worked out that original style of theatre which he defines epic theatre. It is aimed to cause argument instead of emotions. In fact he doesn’t want to cause suggestions but arguments, encouraging critical judgment and not the identification which take the audience in a greater consciousness. The interpretative technique, detached and objective, provokes, in the audience, an effect of “alienation” towards what happens on stage, distance that amplifies putting in reflections and comments as stage directions, songs and notice that interrupt the event. The author gives up description of involving psychological conflicts in characters relations. This “cooling” assimilates the Brechtian poetic to “New Objectivity” and to messages of violent denounce just like Georg Grosz elaborates in his works during the same years.

B. BRECHT

• Application of the fundamental conventions of the epic drama
• Refusal of a pre-arranged theatrical theme
• Characters are introduced in their sincere carnal expression without psychology
• Cold presentation and verification of the facts treated
• Experimental technique of “estrange"
• Global play

MOVING SCENOGRAPHIES

The Bauhaus Theatre is based on similitude between art of construction and stage art: from here the idea of construct geometric shapes around the actor’s body, related to the space, these “costumes in volumes” are delineated by flexible structures that draw the outline with the help of projection and light technique effects. This artistic movement also was born with b ideological assumptions: his creators are, for direction aspect Erwin Piscator and for the set designing Walter Gropius, one of the most architect of the age and founder of the Bauhaus. All the Bauhaus of the ‘20th and ‘30th was “a workshop of ideas”, a collective project that assembled the best European talents of design, applied arts and architecture.
Students will experiment the existing relationship between set designing and acting, between the plastic arts and presentation. Stage designing will not play the role of a background frame, but it will have a "speaking" function. Thanks to the use of simple stage objects, raw materials (boxes, suitcases, newspapers, umbrellas, cloths, colors, etc.) students will be able to see how the set dynamically interacts with the actor. The objects are taken and "inverted"; they have a form and function, which is easily recognizable but it is subverted. Their meaning is overturned; it is shaped and moulded, in order to assume a new semantic value.

THE ABSURD AT THE CINEMA: THE MONTY PYTHON

How does the comic mechanism of the “theatre of the absurd” change when the audience’s eye is a videocamera? What changes in comic timing, in acting, in body, in face expressiveness? How to interpret characters that don’t have a real “psychological” identity? Once again the study path is concentrated on differences inside the same style, between theatrical interpretation and cinematographic one.
This time our referent will be “the Monty Python”, one of the most desecrating team of British cinema. After visioning their filmography, students will have to create and interpret sketches on the absurd and “non-sense”, using, with the due sagacity, a specific cinematographic language. The study path theatre/cinema is at its third stage: from characters’ realism of the 1st year, to Shakespearean acting of 2nd year to alteration, absence and paradox of surreal characters and “non-sense”.

Monty Python’s filmography

- And Now For Something Completely Different, 1971
- Monty Python and the Holy Graal, 1975
- Monty Python's Life of Brian, 1979
- The Meaning of Life, 1983
- A Fish Called Wanda, 1988

Other Filmography

- Frankestein Junior (di M. Brooks, con Gene Wilder 1975)
- Helzapoppin (di Henry C. Potter 1941)

The Modern Comedy

The excursus of the comic phenomenon is completed with the study of the mechanisms of the modern comedy and farce. If in modern comedy, whose tradition is mainly Italian and French, the comedy springs from characters characterized and from a text full of hilarious jokes, in the farce, mostly of Anglo-Saxon tradition, the daily and dry characters find themselves trapped in a series of misunderstandings and chain mechanisms that make laugh with the situation rather than with the text.

E. DE FILIPPO

Beginning with De Filippo’s plays, the themes and the improvisation techniques of the Comedy will be initially revised. However, the character will lose the animal instinct typical of the mask, in order to assume a psychological connotation that represents a "type", a perfect model of man. De Filippo’s characters are the result of the direct analysis of reality: he takes situations from everyday life and they become the representation of great universal dramas. The "tragic" aspect of modern man is released from the conflict between the individual and society.

- Direction as an integral part of the text
- Psychological connotation of the characters that represent "types", “exemplary models”
- Classical narrative structure
- Use of chorus
- Resumption of themes and improvisation techniques of the Comedy of Art and Farce

E. LABICHE

- Humor of "movement" as opposed to the humor of “jokes”
- Vivacity of the character
- Tastes, troubles, vices of the lower middle-class spirit
- Use of fixed rules in humor

A. P. CECHOV

- Stage tension in the search for harmony
- Taste for the disguise
- Character’s connotation as a "fixed" tool
- Melodrama broken by continuous “qui pro quo”
- Sense of duty as solution of life

M. FRAYN

- Play within a play
- Humor of "situation”
- Humor of "repetition”
- The back-stage
- Rhythm and musicality of the character
- Puns

R. COONEY and P. SHAFFER

The work of English playwrights Peter Shaffer and Ray Cooney illustrates the genre of Anglo-Saxon comedy that is based on the typical elements of the farce: the exchange of person, the misunderstanding of the situation, the display of vicesand defects of society through the reaction of paradoxical situations and characters, with spicy comedy.
- Reference to the "Vaudeville"
- Misunderstandings and double meanings
- Twists and paradoxical situations
- Role exchange of characters

COMEDY AND CINEMA

In this period students will be asked to conduce another deep interpretative research. They will concentrate on different shades of comedy, exploring the cinematographic proofs. The “noir” and the “typically English” humour, the brilliant comedy, the farcical comedy, the grotesque style, dwelling on cinematographic text and screenplays and on identifying coherence of characters. The chosen films are almost all “choral” episodes where there are many characters, each one with its precedent circumstances. Recovering Strasberg’s method, students will propose original and personalised versions of the analysed film, developing both theatrical and cinematographic interpretation.

Filmography

• Noir
  - To Catch a Thief (by A. Hitchcock, with Cary Grant, 1955)
  - The Trouble with Harry (by A. Hitchcock, with S. MacLaine 1956)
  - Murder by Death (by R. Moore, with P. Falk, P. Sellers 1976)
  - Arsenic and Old Lace (by F. Capra, with C. Grant, P. Lane 1944)
  
• Grottesco
  - La grande abbuffata (by M. Ferreri, with U. Tognazzi, M. Mastroianni, P. Noiret 1973)
  - L’ultimo Capodanno (by M. Risi, with A. Haber, M. Bellucci, P. Natoli 1998)
  - Parenti serpenti (by Monicelli with A. Haber, A. Cenci, M. Confalone, P. Panelli 1992)
  - Brutti sporchi e cattivi (by E. Scola, with N. Manfredi 1976)
  
• Light comedy/farse
  - Noises Off (by P. Bogdanovich, with M. Caine, C. Reed 1992)
  - Funeral Party (by F.Oz, with M. Mac Fayden, R. Graves 2007)
  - Barefoot in the Park (by G. Saks, with R. Redford, J. Fonda 1967)

CHARACTER STUDY - COMIC AND DRAMATIC TEXTS

At this point of the course, once the acting techniques have been acquired based on the styles and more acting skills have matured, it becomes necessary to deepen the study of the character through the analysis and learning of both dramatic and comic texts regardless of style. In this way the student will face the monologue and the dialogue overcoming the stylistic limit and experimenting in acting the union and the organicity of theatrical matter. The chosen texts for this path are taken from: "The Righteous" and the "State of Siege" by A. Camus, "The Jewish Wife" by B. Brecht, "Night Colloquium with a Despised Man" by F. Durrenmatt, "Life is a dream" by V. Calderon, "Maria Stuarda" by F. Shiller, "The message of Jehanne", "Mozart and the gray steward", "Nascuntur poetae" and "Childe Rorland to the dark tower came" by T. Wilder, "A streetcar called desire", by T. Williams, "The Anniversary" and "The Lover" by H. Pinter, "The Indifferent" by J. Cocteau, "Small marital crimes" by E. Schmitt and "The viewpoint" and "Long live the Queen" by A. Nicolaj.

Satire and Parody in present days

CARTOON AND COMIC STRIP

This period of study will be devoted to the study of Cartoons and the Comic strip. The actors will learn to be able to perceive and to act out mutant spaces, the disorderly tensions, the vital and frantic impulses, and the degrading and violent dynamics that surround us. They will create situations that contain the flow of images, the environment and the characters of contemporary society. Speed, which is the main feature of present day communication, will be the main theme. Therefore, the descriptive or the linear slow pace of oral speech is abandoned, to give way to a new language of fast and easy, legible frames. The style of the white pantomime will be intertwined with the comic strip and cartoons, with their animated heroes and their onomatopoeic dialogues. The nervous gesture of the actor will express the plastic dramas of Superman and Popeye. These heroes, which are always associated with future time, are the result of the transformation of stereotypes into caricatures.
- Pantomime of Comics
- Language of gestures
- Onomatopoeic sounds
- Illusion of spaces, objects and characters
- The mimed gangs
- Study of caricatures
- Mechanics of the comic strip character
- Timing of "gags"
- Distortion of the spoken language.

THE MODERN BUFFOON AND THE PARODY

The buffoon is part of modern day society consequently the key in which modern life is interpreted now becomes ironic instead of humorous. The modern buffoon is a violent revealer of reality. He abandons the deformation in his appearance to assume a very biting psychological deformation. The parodies of the characters and the situations will be loaded with mocking comments, which are the mirror of hypocrisy and human weakness. The will to accuse is clear and evident. The buffoon’s manipulation of reality is devised to strike hard but the spectator is quickly side-tracked when the aggression becomes too b.

THE DISMANTLING OF FICTION

Once more tv shows, which are the deformed mirror of the trends in our society, will be used as pretexts for work on the modern satire. Students will present an imitation of TV programs: sports shows, quiz shows, soap operas, fashion shows and above all commercials and the news. Using a fictitious theatrical game, the contemporary word is expressed in the tragic-comic paradox, the satire of custom and the modern grotesque. The theatrical writing will try to disclose the "hidden mechanisms" of television in an interpretation which is a grotesque caricature of TV characters. From the humor of the "dysfunction" game to the irony of the "parodic" game we will reach the absurdity of "non-sense". In this work, the study of the pantomime and the decomposition of movement will play a fundamental role in the relationship between image and frame. The student’s aim is to turn the stage into a real screen, by using "fade", "replay", "go back" , "slow down", "fast motion", "zoom" and "zapping".
Finally, students will have to create “situation sketches” that will grow ber the more characters will be “real”, progressively satiric tricks will be develop based on the multiples improvisations and writings elaborated by students and set up on stage.

USE OF VOICE

3° Year

In the third year the students apply the vocal and phonetic techniques in the difficult interpretations related to the texts of the theater of the Absurd based on the inconsistency of the logical sense and on a fragmented, automated, schizophrenic language that requires particular vocal virtuosity. Moreover, in parodic interpretations and custom satire, students will train themselves to the analysis and reproduction of particular styles of language and of the speech's rhythms.

VOCAL TRAINING

• Deformations: falsetto, guttural, altered voices
• Dramatic sound scores: obsessive and circular repetition of the text
• Anomatopeica study and sonarization
• Language in the absurd: fragmentariness, schizophrenia, incoherence
• Rupture and transformation of feeling in speech
• Talking in satire: commentators, presenters, announcers, etc.
• Aulic and disgusted language
• Invented, deformed, improper words
• Verbal automatisms, assonances, the dragging of assonances

PHYSICAL TRAINING / FELDENKRAIS METHOD / CHOREOGRAPHIES

3° Year

In the third year of study, work on movement is developed on two fronts: the creative and compositional aspect is applied to different theatrical languages with the creation of choreographies inserted in the relative interpretative style (tragic, meló, buffonesco, surrealist etc.) and also with dance-theater which combines technique, expressive, improvisation and narrative abilities through body language; body language, now mature and conscious, goes in search of technical virtuosity and mimicry, from the stylization to the abstraction of movement, up to the reproduction of special video-cinematographic effects with the sole means of the body.

CHOREOGRAPHY

- Tragic choreography
- Metropolitan choreography
- Choreographies of the "foire"
- Meló choreographies
- Buffoon choreography
- Elizabethan choreography
- Surrealist choreography
- Pictorial choreography
- Choreographies of dance-theater

MIMIC VIRTUOSISMS

- The frame
- The moviola
- Zoom
- The rallenty
- The fade
- Zapping
- Rewind / Flash Forward
- Flash back

COMPOSITION

- Improvisational macrosystems
- Final composition
- Study of spacial trajectoryi
- “Motions” of feelings

DANCE-THEATER

- Daily gesture and its abstraction
- Repetition of individual motor cadences
- Stylization of movements
- Voice-movement improvisations
- Floorwork and Partnering

FELDENKRAIS METHOD

The Feldenkrais method is a method created by the israeli scientist, physicist, and engineer Moshé Feldenkrais. It is essentially based on the acquisition of awareness of one’s own motor patterns and is composed of sequences of simple movements which involve every part of the body. Through in-depth listening to the feelings that movement evokes, the students learn to perceive and correct their postural imbalances and they experience “economy movement” driven by the body’s own weight and by the dynamics of movement rather than muscular strength, thus bettering their own coordination and fluidity.

• Study of the spiral
• Postural visualization
• Motor and development of movement
• Movement and development in space
• Exercises of the Feldenkrais Method
• Movement pathways

MUSIC AND CHORAL SINGING

3° Year

The theoretical study of music is dealt with through its development from antiquity to the birth of polyphony; from the song of the feast of the troubadours to the innovations of the '400 and '500 that led to the birth of the melodrama, the lyric that made Italy famous throughout the world and from which the Anglo-Saxon musical formula was modulated; through the great authors of the Baroque, Classic and Romantic period, we arrive at the stylistic innovations of the 20th century. Next to the theoretical study the practice of choral singing is faced: starting from the division of the voices into the four sections (soprano, alto, tenor, bass), we learn the choral singing techniques and the relationship between the sections (canons, second voice) and between soloist and choir.

CHORAL SINGING

• Formation of the four choral part: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass
• Choir exercises
• Canons and second voice
• Gospel
• The soloist-chorus relationship

HISTORY OF THEATER, MIME AND DANCE

3° Year
MODERN THEATER

The study of Contemporary Theater history, in the 3rd year, goes hand in hand with that of the Historical Avant-gardes (Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, etc.). From those new forms of theater were born: the theater of Cruelty by Antonin Artaud, the dramaturgy Epic by Bertolt Becht, the theater of the Absurd by Luigi Pirandello, Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco, which change the approach to the staging. That road was already opened by Jean Cocteau, Robert Musil, and Henrik Ibsen. Amongst others, Alfred Jarry stands out as the inventor of the Ubu Roi character. On one hand we find the innovation of the active authors in the Weimar Republic: Brecht,Majakovskij, Piscator and Lorca. On the other hand, the pedagogy of Kostantin Stanislavskij and his students, Mejerchol'd above all, will bring the figure of the director to the center of attention in the experience at the Moscow Art Theater. The word theater gives attention to the physical and interpretive action of the actor and develop methods that emphasize the actor's identification with the character (Stanislavskij method later re-elaborated by Lee Strasberg) and the sense of the game, of presence and listening to the scene (Jacques Lecoq method). The birth of cinema and above all its historical evolution, from the cinema of Lumière Brothers to the fictional cinema of Georges Méliès, from the narrative cinema to the last frontiers of digital techniques, marked a b synergy between the ancient live stage art and the "new" form of representation that, over the years, has given significant artistic fruits and which is still fruitful today. In the '60s and '70s, the theater takes inspiration and contaminates with the oriental tradition, yoga, martial arts, spiritual disciplines. The actor's training path is designed as personal growth. Even in Italy, from the second post-war period until today, the theater of directorial development has developed with figures of great importance such as Eduardo and Strehler. The function of the director, who takes the upper hand on the role of the master actor "show-stealer", will determine the show structure and the required kind of interpretation. Great is the influence of these masters on the post-war theatrical movement and on the creation of "groups", such as the Odin Teatret by Eugenio Barba, the Poor Theater by Jerzy Grotowski, the Julian Beck theater and Judith's Living Theater Malina, up to the Lee Strasberg's Actor's Studio. The research theater and the open-air are born from the experience of the "theater groups" in the '70s and have evolved feeding on the languages' contaminations and of the new media's technological innovations.
• The Theater of Avantguard: Jarry, Cocteau, Artaud
• The Theater of the Absurd: Ionesco, Beckett, Pirandello
• The Epic and Social Theater: Brecht, Boal, Kantor
• The Director's Thearer, pioneers and founders: Stanislavskij, Craig, Appia, Copeau, Mejerchol'd
• The Post-Second World War Theater: De Filippo, Strehler, Visconti, Fassbinder, Dürrenmatt
• Theatrical criticism

OPEN AIR THEATER / MANIPULATION AND ACTING WITH OBJECTS / SET DESIGN AND USE OF PROPS

3° Year

Under the name of Open Air Theater, theatrical representation is enriched by new languages: Scenography in movement, video-projections and abstractions. The different techniques and expressive modes give life to a visual language of great impact, capable of connecting with people of every age, ethnicity, and culture and of reaching an international audience. These productions foresee the combined use of machines, large moving objects, fireworks, water games, music (sometimes live) and video projections. Video is a huge interactive tool which binds with a dramaturgy created by experimentation, research, and the meeting with different languages: cinema, dance, nanodance, performance, “DIY” figure theater (marionettes, puppets, pupazzi, shadow) and Black Theater (or Black Light Theater). A kind of polyphony of artistic fields narrating parallelly to offer stimulating creative diversity.
• Writing
• Scene construction
• Construction of mannequins, humanoids, marionettes, etc.
• Manipulation and micromanipulation
• Material experimentation (textiles, recycled objects, vegetables, etc)
• Site specific
Fundamental component for staging; the relationship between the actor, the scenic space (two or three dimensional, realistic, symbolic, abstract) and the use of elements and props present in the space. In fact, from the relationship between the actor, space, and object, the creation of the assembly of theatrical scenes is given which characterizes the stylistic cipher of the director. It is necessary to begin from the knowledge of the basics of theatrical structure. The environment and the conformation that the director imagines for the theatrical box determine a first form of contextualization of staging and defines, through its visual impact, its critical and satirical message, the desire to keep to a representational or abstract representation, and the poetry of the imagery. The direction of the actor is placed in relation to the staging component in the perspective of conformity (philological staging - realistic acting) or in contrast (symbolic staging - realistic acting or realistic staging - absurd acting). The use of props and their manipulation are expressions of the dramatic composition desired by the director. • Stage architecture
• History of the theatrical edifice
• Theatrical box
• History of Art and Scenography
• Stage Techniques
• Manipulation and acting with props
• Mobile elements in space
• Moving sets: sheets, bamboo, ropes, metal, cardboard, cans
• Drawn sets, comics, by volume, in movement, in transformation
• The manipulator and “special effects”
• Story and fantasy environment creation
•The body and the object in poetic relation and their staging
• Materials and shapes, in relation to the text or the theatrical dynamics
• Reproduction of the human body: axes, shapes and colors
•The human mask with recycled materials
•Light effects in dramatic action

DIRECTION AND SCREENPLAY

3° Year

The students practice writing and staging poems, monologues and narrations, till the elaboration of screenplaies, sketches and free adaptations, up to the synthesis of entire works, of the author they are studying. This is how students contend with short performances in order to compare themselves with the directorial aspects of the representation: from selection to the cuts of the text, from the narrative style to the individuation of the most suitable scenographic languages, from the choice of a soundtrack to the scenic set up. This work is supported with the research and analysis of the various staging of the same work or works by the same author as much theatrical as televisual or cinematographic, through the screening of repertory films, audio-visual contributions and historical and documentary reconstructions. The styles and languages from the beginning of the 20th century to nowadays are analyzed, from the avant-gardes to the director's theater, from experimentation to satire, from far-flung to surreal comedies and the various directing techniques applied to the live show are identified. Cinema and new media up to the latest mixes with digital techniques. With the support of repertoire footage, audiovisual contributions and historical and documentary reconstructions, the stylistic choices, the training methods, the direction of the actor and the staging of the great masters of the 20th century are compared. Following this phase, the students experience the writing and staging of many free adaptations and original passages taken from the environments, themes and interpretative mechanisms of nonsense, of the theater of the absurd, epic, surreal, etc. The students then learn how to make an adaptation of the auteur comedies, the relationship of the theater with the visual arts, the satirical sketch writing, the virtuous relationship with the image.
• Summary, reductions and staging of an act or work of the authors treated
• Original scriptures and staging: surreal, "absurd", nonsense, etc.
• Directorial styles and languages
• Directorial techniques
• Analysis of a public figure, search for vocabulary: imitatory and parodic soliloquy
• Analysis of custom phenomena: language research, satirical transposition
• Construction of sketches based on the effect of moviola, zapping, etc.
• Dramatization of the frame
• Cine-television and multimedia interpretation
• Scriptures and staging of "moving paintings": musical, poetic and literary associations
• Scriptures and staging of short "situation" comedies
• Short subjects and film scripts
• Screenplays of short "sit-com" shooting and editing
• Artistic projects of interaction between scenic, audio-visual and digital arts

PROJECT AND REALIZATION OF A SCREENPLAY AND PERSONAL DIRECTION

The final phase of this path will bring every single student to the ideation and realization of a personal project in writing and direction. Each student, during this period, will be the director of his own project, directing a group of 4/6 pupils/actors. This is an all-embracing experience for the student since he has the possibility, to realize a directing project by experimenting his own method and disposing of the actors, and also comparing all the artistic aspects that make up the directorial choices: from music to costume, from makeup to set design, from lights to the relationship with the public.
The directing project, supported by the teacher, will be divided into several phases:
1) Presentation and discussion of the project. 2) Methodological Trace. 3) Trials with the actors. 4) Intermediate verification. 5) Public presentation. 6) Critique of work.
• Original writing or free adaptation of theatrical or narrative literature
• Choice of themes: social, psychological, epic narrative, dreamlike, topical, etc.
• Choice of scenic language, character profile
• Script structure (narrative, action, linear, scenic paintings, temporal jumps, etc.)
• Choice of the recitative form and the scenic movement
• Linear, analog, surreal, interactive "moving pictures", etc.
• Choice of parts and direction of the actors
• Coordination of the working group
• The architecture of space, settings and choreography
• Stage music, costume, set design
• Improvement of the overall layout

PSYCHOLOGY AND TEATRAL PEDAGOGY

3° Year

Theatrical pedagogy has its roots in the innovations that twentieth century directors-pedagogists (Stanislavski, Mejerchol'd, Vachtangov, Copeau, Brecht, Grotowski, Brook, Boal, Barba, etc.) have brought to the theatrical field within the laboratories of theatrical research of the twentieth century, where attention is shifted from the realization of a show to the centrality of the actor, the protagonist of a process. Theater meets pedagogy in the moment in which it places man at the center and gives voice to him, when he recovers every single individual with his own personality and his own expressiveness and makes him grow through an individual path that is, however, inserted in a group design.
• Theoretical elements of theatrical methods and pedagogies
• Paths of relaxation, breathing, concentration, listening and interaction between the actors
• Study of "theatrical training"
• Sensory path: specific sensory preparation, research on the circumstances
• Study of the educational path: training, improvisations, settings, practicing
• Situations, exercises on texts, staging
• Study of comic mechanisms and times
• Management of a monographic theatrical lesson or with particular training objectives

THEATRATICAL TRAINING

- Exercises on breathing and presence
- Exercises on listening and interaction
- Relaxation and concentration exercises
- Exercises on coordination and rhythm
- Exercises on space and balance
- Sensory memory training
- Training on motivations and circumstances

THE THEATRICAL LESSON

- Physical and vocal training
- Sensory improvisations
- Introduction to styles
- Exercise on texts
- Improvisation on comic times
- Group dynamics
- Criticism of the work reviewed

CULTURAL MANAGEMENT

3° Year

At the end of the course of study, in order to assist students managing the world of work and helping them to create their own companies, theater groups and work teams in the cinematographic and audiovisual field, we will address the different organizational aspects of the production of a spectacular project: from its conception to the staging, from the research of the funds necessary for its realization, to the legislative norms in view of a simulated production of a show project.

LEGISLATION, MANAGEMENT AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE SHOW

- From the idea to the realization
- Management and distribution
- Legislation and Copyright Law, the C.C.N.L.
- Administration/Budget
- Fund raising and sponsorships

COMMUNICATION AND PROMOTION OF THE SHOW

- Marketing of the show
- Communication
- Press office
- Promotion of the cultural sector
- Guerrilla marketing
- National and international festivals

STAGE REGULATION

- Stage regulation
- Professional roles in the theater
- Professional roles in the cinema
- Organization of the tests and the tour
- Organization of the stage and set

SCENOGRAPHY AND USE OF THE OBJECT

3° Year

A fundamental component for staging is the relationship between the actor, the stage space (bi or three-dimensional, realistic, symbolic, abstract) and the use of the elements and objects present in the space. The relationship between actor, space and objects, in fact, creates the stylistic code of the direction.
• Scenic architecture
• History of the theater building
• The theatrical “box”
• History of art and scenography
• Set design techniques
• Manipulation and acting with objects
• Movable elements in space
• Moving scenes: sheets, bamboo, ropes, metal, cartons, bins
• Design sets, comics, in volume, in movement, in transformation
• The manipulator and "the special effect"
• The creation of history and fantastic settings
• The body and the object in poetic relationship - their staging
• Subjects and forms, in relation to the text or the theatrical dynamic
• Reproduction of the human body: axes, shapes and colors
• The human mask with recycled materials
• The effect of lights in dramatic action

Program 1st Year

Program 2nd Year

Program 3rd Year